(from Ber - I have a .pdf of a similar high intensity workout called
PaceBook. If you would like a copy email
me and put pacebook in the subject header. I am 68 and discovered that
working out more than twice a week was a waste of time, although I play
volleyball and softball 6 days a week. We definitely need a lot of recovery
time. But high intensity weight training works. I also take my doggies up a
steep mountain trail several times a week which works our legs hard and
entails very deep breathing for 20 minutes. My Rotweiler is 8 years old now
and it has done wonders for his legs and circulatory system. He does not
like this trail. www.detailshere.com/pedregaltrail.htm
)

This goes along with the ROM machine claim
that you only have to use their machine for four minutes a day to get
all the benefits. One day works upper body, next day works lower body. http://rommachine.wordpress.com/

The most recent research shows that
relatively short bursts of intense exercise—even if done only a
total of a few minutes each week—can deliver many of the health- and
fitness benefits you get from doing hours of conventional exercise.

By doing just three minutes of
High Intensity Training (HIT) a week for four weeks, you could see
significant changes in important health indices.

At some research centers, participants
were able to improve their insulin sensitivity an average of 24
percent with as little as three minutes of HIT per week.

BBC News reports:

“So how does it work? ...
Part of the explanation is (probably) that HIT uses far more
of your muscle tissue than classic aerobic exercise.

When you do HIT, you are using
not just the leg muscles, but also the upper body including arms and
shoulders, so that 80 percent of the body's muscle cells are
activated, compared to 20-40 percent for walking or moderate
intensity jogging or cycling.”

But there’s an important caveat...

Just how well high intensity training
actually works may in large part depend on your genetic makeup.

Your Genes May Determine How Little
Exercise You Need

We often tend to believe that exercise
will affect most people in similar ways. But that may be an
oversimplification—at least when it comes to how little
exercise you can get away with and still maintain good health. In the
featured article, Michael Mosley offers the following explanation:

“The fact is that people
respond to exercise in very different ways. In one international
study1,000 people were asked to exercise four hours a week for 20
weeks. Their aerobic fitness was measured before and after starting
this regime and the results were striking. Although 15 percent of
people made huge strides (so-called "super-responders"),
20 percent showed no real improvement at all
("non-responders").

There is no suggestion that the
non-responders weren't exercising properly, it was simply that the
exercise they were doing was not making them any aerobically fitter.
Jamie [Timmons. Professor of ageing biology at Birmingham
University] and his collaborators investigated the reasons for these
variations and discovered that much of the difference could be
traced to a small number of genes. On the basis of this
finding they have developed a genetic test to predict who is likely
to be a responder, and who is not.”

I thought that the recent report in the
BBC News was an interesting confirmation of the Peak Fitness
approach I have been advocating for some time now. It is important not
to get caught up in the non-responder element of the report as it is
was related to aerobic fitness, which we now realize is far less
important than anaerobic fitness. It is safe to assume that
everyone, including you, requires the metabolic challenge to stay
healthy and avoid disease. While some people may actually get more
aerobically fit than others, virtually everyone seems to benefit if
the exercises are done properly.

Less than One Hour a Month Can Improve
Your Insulin Sensitivity by Nearly 25 Percent

Mosley tested HIT for himself, and
reveals the results in the featured article. He performed the
exercises on a stationary bike. After warming up, he cycled
“all-out” for 20 seconds, rested for a couple of minutes, and then
gave it his all for another 20 seconds. Total time; just a few
minutes! After four weeks—which amounted to a grand total of
12 minutes of intense exercise and 36 minutes of relaxed
pedaling—Mosley’s insulin sensitivity had improved a respectable
24 percent. His aerobic fitness, however, remained unchanged.

He writes:

“It turns out that the genetic
test they had done on me had suggested I was a non-responder and
however much exercise I had done, and of whatever form, my aerobic
fitness would not have improved. My dreams of winning Olympic gold
ended there and then. I will continue doing HIT because I can see
the benefits. It won't suit everyone, because although it is short,
it is extremely intense.”

This truly is amazing, and while
aerobic fitness is indeed important, improving and maintaining good
insulin sensitivity is perhaps one of the most important
aspects of optimal health. Previous research has demonstrated that 20
minutes of high intensity training, two to three times a week, can
yield greater results than slow and steady conventional
aerobics done five times a week. But the fact that you can improve
your insulin sensitivity by nearly 25 percent with a time investment
of less than ONE HOUR A MONTH really should send people straight to
the gym en masse...

How to Maximize the Health Benefits of
Peak Fitness Training

However, you don’t need a gym to
perform high intensity interval exercises. It can be performed with
virtually any type of exercise; with or without equipment. You can
just as easily perform interval training by walking or running
outdoors as you can using a recumbent bike or an elliptical machine.

While it’s theoretically possible to
reap valuable results with as little as three minutes once a week, it
might be more beneficial doing them two or three times a week for a
total of four minutes of intense exertion, especially if you are not
doing strength training.. You do not need to do them
more often than that however. In fact, doing it more frequently than
two or three times a week can be counterproductive, as your body needs
to recover between sessions.

I personally do Peak Fitness on an
elliptical once a week (see below) but currently, twice a week, I am
doing a fairly intense strength training workout. If I feel that
I have plenty of energy and can complete the workout, then I continue
in that frequency, but if I get tired and poop out during the session,
I know it is time for me to increase my recovery time. In that case, I
decrease strength training to once a week and put more time in on the
Power Plate.

If you want to do more, focus on making
sure you're really pushing yourself as hard as you can during those
two or three weekly sessions, rather than increasing the frequency.
Intensity is KEY for reaping all the benefits interval training can
offer. To perform it correctly, you’ll want to raise your heart rate
to your anaerobic threshold, and to do that, you have to give it your
all for those 20 to 30 second intervals. Here's a summary of
what a typical interval routine might look like using an elliptical:

Warm up for three minutes

Exercise as hard and fast as you can
for 30 seconds. You should be gasping for breath and feel like you
couldn't possibly go on another few seconds. It is better to use
lower resistance and higher repetitions to increase your heart
rate

Recover for 90 seconds, still
moving, but at slower pace and decreased resistance

Repeat the high intensity exercise
and recovery 7 more times

When you're first starting out,
depending on your level of fitness, you may only be able to do two or
three repetitions of the high intensity intervals. As you get fitter,
just keep adding repetitions until you’re doing eight during your 20
minute session. You will notice that the Peak Fitness has 30 seconds
rather than 20 and goes for 8 sessions so it is a harder workout. But,
as the article states, if you do less, you will still get benefits.
They just may not be as dramatic as with the Peak Fitness approach.

Even Brief Exercise Produces Genetic
Changes

The featured findings also support
recent research published in the journal Cell Metabolism,
which shows that when healthy but inactive people exercise intensely,
even if the exercise is brief, it produces an immediate change in
their DNA. While the underlying genetic code in the muscle remains
unchanged, exercise causes important structural and chemical changes
to the DNA molecules within the muscles, and this contraction-induced
gene activation appears to be early events leading to the genetic
reprogramming of muscle for strength, and to the structural and
metabolic benefits of exercise.

Several of the genes affected by an
acute bout of exercise are genes involved in fat metabolism.
Specifically, the study suggests that when you exercise, your body
almost immediately experiences genetic activation that increases the
production of fat-busting proteins. Previous studies have identified
and measured a wide variety of biochemical changes that occur during
exercise. More than 20 different metabolitesv
are affected by exercise, including compounds that help you burn
calories and fat, and compounds that help stabilize your blood sugar.
These biochemical changes create a positive feedback loop.

As mentioned earlier, one of the key
health benefits of exercise is that it helps normalize your glucose
and insulin levels by optimizing insulin receptor sensitivity. This is
perhaps the most important factor for optimizing your overall health
and preventing chronic disease.

Aim for a Well-Rounded Fitness Program

While high intensity interval exercises
accomplish greater benefits in a fraction of the time compared to
slow, endurance-type exercises like jogging, I do not recommend
limiting yourself to a few minutes of exercise per week. If that’s
all you have for now, then by all means, do what you can. But ideally,
to truly optimize your health, you’ll want to strive for a varied
and well-rounded fitness program that incorporates other types of
exercise as well. Without variety, your body will quickly adapt. As a
general rule, as soon as an exercise becomes easy to complete, you
need to increase the intensity and/or try another exercise to keep
challenging your body.

I recommend incorporating the following
types of exercise into your program:

Interval (Anaerobic)
Training: This is when you alternate short bursts of
high-intensity exercise with gentle recovery periods.

Strength Training:
Rounding out your exercise program with a 1-set strength training
routine will ensure that you're really optimizing the possible
health benefits of a regular exercise program. You can also
"up" the intensity by slowing it down. For more
information about using super
slow weight training as a form of high intensity interval
exercise, please see my interview with Dr.
Doug McGuff.

Core Exercises:
Your body has 29 core muscles located mostly in your back, abdomen
and pelvis. This group of muscles provides the foundation for
movement throughout your entire body, and strengthening them can
help protect and support your back, make your spine and body less
prone to injury and help you gain greater balance and stability.
You need enough repetitions to exhaust your muscles. The weight
should be heavy enough that this can be done in fewer than 12
repetitions, yet light enough to do a minimum of four repetitions.
It is also important NOT to exercise the same muscle groups every
day. They need at least two days of rest to recover, repair and
rebuild. Exercise programs like Pilates and yoga are also great
for strengthening your core muscles, as are specific exercises you
can learn from a personal trainer.

Stretching: My
favorite type of stretching is active isolated stretches developed
by Aaron Mattes. With Active Isolated Stretching, you hold each
stretch for only two seconds, which works with your body's natural
physiological makeup to improve circulation and increase the
elasticity of muscle joints. This technique also allows your body
to repair itself and prepare for daily activity. You can also use
devices like the Power
Plate to help you stretch.